Category: Vatican II Revolution

From the Department of Small-Minded Rules.

We are Traditional Catholics. We adhere to the old teaching that the death penalty is Just Punishment.

Pope Francis once said that, “The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules.” Quoted in America Magazine a Jesuit radical left rag disguised as Catholic. Not recommended reading.–Ed.

The following was originally posted 10/27/2014. We re-post this today as the pope has made news once again in regards to abolishing the death penalty and has proclaimed he can change the Church’s Magisterium. The Remnant Newspaper (August 2, 2018) has an excellent analysis by Christopher Ferrara of the invalidity of the pope’s claims.

Fidelity and Action blog, October 27, 2014 — In the following article, Pope Francis states he is against the death penalty. He also says he is against life sentences. Our snarky comments are in red.

Catholic News Service. By Francis X. Rocca. 10/12/2014.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis called for abolition of the death penalty as well as life imprisonment, and denounced what he called a “penal populism” that promises to solve society’s problems by punishing crime instead of pursuing social justice.

“It is impossible to imagine that states today cannot make use of another means than capital punishment to defend peoples’ lives from an unjust aggressor,” the pope said Oct. 23 in a meeting with representatives of the International Association of Penal Law.

“All Christians and people of good will are thus called today to struggle not only for abolition of the death penalty, whether it be legal or illegal and in all its forms, but also to improve prison conditions, out of respect for the human dignity of persons deprived of their liberty. And this, I connect with life imprisonment,” he said. “Life imprisonment is a hidden death penalty.”

The pope noted that the Vatican recently eliminated life imprisonment from its own penal code.

Our response:The population of Vatican City is only 839 people.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, cited by Pope Francis in his talk, “the traditional teaching of the church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending lives against the unjust aggressor,” but modern advances in protecting society from dangerous criminals mean that “cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.”

The pope said that, although a number of countries have formally abolished capital punishment, “the death penalty, illegally and to a varying extent, is applied all over the planet” because “extrajudicial executions” are often disguised as “clashes with offenders or presented as the undesired consequences of the reasonable, necessary and proportionate use of force to apply the law.”

Our response: The pope and the United Nations desire the U.S. to defer to other countries. It’s the New World Order trending.

The pope denounced the detention of prisoners without trial, who he said account for more than 50 percent of all incarcerated people in some countries. He said maximum security prisons can be a form of torture, since their “principal characteristic is none other than external isolation,” which can lead to “psychic and physical suffering such as paranoia, anxiety, depression and weight loss and significantly increase the chance of suicide.”

He also rebuked unspecified government involved in kidnapping people for “illegal transportation to detention centers in which torture is practiced.”

Our response: Being a victim of heinous violence is a form of torture.

The pope said criminal penalties should not apply to children, and should be waived or limited for the elderly, who “on the basis of their very errors can offer lessons to the rest of society. We don’t learn only from the virtues of saints but also from the failings of errors of sinners.”

Our response: Okay, then let’s free the elderly priests who raped children from prison!

The pope said some politicians and members of the media promote “violence and revenge, public and private, not only against those responsible for crimes, but also against those under suspicion, justified or not.”

Our response: If the pope is so concerned about public violence against criminals, then he needs to be reminded of the essential requirement in a civil society: PRISONS! Baffles the mind!

He denounced a growing tendency to think that the “most varied social problems can be resolved through public punishment . . . that by means of that punishment we can obtain benefits that would require the implementation of another type of social policy, economic policy and policy of social inclusion.”

Our response: The pope wants us to invited members of ISIS and the Black Panthers to tea. See “Radical Chic” by Tom Wolfe. Using techniques similar to those of racist regimes of the past, the pope said, unspecified forces today create “stereotypical figures that sum up the characteristics that society perceives as threatening.”

Our response: Is the pope implying that jihadis are not threatening?

Pope Francis concluded his talk by denouncing human trafficking and corruption, both crimes he said “could never be committed without the complicity, active or passive, of public authorities.”

The pope spoke scathingly about the mentality of the typical corrupt person, whom he described as conceited, unable to accept criticism, and prompt to insult and even persecute those who disagree with him. “The corrupt one does not perceive his own corruption. It is a little what happens with bad breath: someone who has it hardly ever realizes it; other people notice and have to tell him,” the pope said. “Corruption is an evil greater than sin. More than forgiveness, this evil needs to be cured.”

University: “The show supports the Catholic teaching on the dignity of the human person.”

‘What is dignity? According to Catholic tradition, man derives dignity from his perfection, i.e, from his knowledge of the truth and his acquisition of the good. Man is worthy of respect in accordance with his intention to obey God, not in accordance with his errors, which will inevitably lead to sin. When Eve the first sinner succumbed, she said, “The serpent deceived me.” Her sin and that of Adam led to the downfall of human dignity, from which we have suffered ever since.’ Source: ‘Open Letter To Confused Catholics.’….Archbishop Lefebvre

Where did the novel trend of “ecumenism” in the Catholic Church come from? You need to know about one of the council fathers, Father Yves Congar, an “expert” at Vatican II.

In the Maryknoll book by National Catholic Reporter veteran writer Robert McClory, FAITHFUL DISSENTERS: Stories of Men and Women Who Loved and CHANGED the Church, one chapter is devoted to Father Yves Congar. McClory is sympathetic to the changes Congar made which has weakened the mission of the Church.

(Editor’s note: this Catholic teaching did not exist before Vatican II.*)

SUMMARY: During the interview, she name-drops Pope JPII – her dialogue with him about the dignity of the human person. She says a death row inmate in chains is not dignity. And neither is the death penalty.

PREJEAN: “The heart of the moral question, and this is in the dialogue I had with Pope John Paul about my Catholic faith and its stance on the death penalty – is that when I’m walking with an individual – granted who’s guilty of a horrible crime that I am abhorred by and he’s chained hand and foot — and he says to me, “Sister pray that I hold up my legs as I make the walk.” I said to the Holy Father, does the Church only uphold the dignity of innocent life? He’s not innocent! But then he’s rendered defenseless, and he’s strapped down, and he’s killed after he’s waited 30 days, counting off the days, or maybe a last minute stay.

“This is not dignity of human life. That’s why essentially the Death Penalty is wrong. It’s against human rights and it’s against the dignity of the person.”

end transcript provided by FIDELITY and ACTION

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*THE PROBLEMS WITH DIGNITATIS HUMANAE

Vatican II’s doctrineon the dignity of the human person has been deemed problematic by many traditional Catholics. Among those who have written about those problems are Archbishop Lefebvre and Michael Davies.

ARCHBISHOP LEFEBVRE:

What is dignity? According to Catholic tradition, man derives dignity from his perfection, i.e, from his knowledge of the truth and his acquisition of the good. Man is worthy of respect in accordance with his intention to obey God, not in accordance with his errors, which will inevitably lead to sin. When Eve the first sinner succumbed, she said, “The serpent deceived me.” Her sin and that of Adam led to the downfall of human dignity, from which we have suffered ever since. Source: ‘Open Letter To Confused Catholics.’

MICHAEL DAVIES:

The title of the Declaration itself, “The Dignity of the Human Person,” epitomizes the man-centered ethos of the Declaration. It is no longer the rights of Christ the King which must take priority but the so called rights of contemporary man, rights which he ascribes to himself in virtue of what is said to be his developing consciousness of his own dignity. In an address to the last Council meeting, on the very day of the promulgation of the Declaration, Pope Paul VI remarked:

One must realize that this Council, which exposed itself to human judgement, insisted very much more upon this pleasant side of man, rather than his unpleasant one. Its attitude was very much and deliberately optimistic. A wave of affection and admiration flowed from the Council over the modern world of humanity. Errors were condemned, indeed, because charity demanded this no less than did truth, but for the persons themselves there was only warning, respect, and love. Instead of depressing diagnoses, encouraging remedies; instead of direful prognostics, messages of trust issued from the Council to the present-day world. The modern world’s values were not only respected but honoured, its efforts approved, its aspirations purified and blessed.

“Oregon is not a kill state.” Sister Helen Prejean, referring to her perception of Oregonians’ anti-death penalty sentiments.

But Oregon is a kill state. The first state to legalize “physician assisted suicide” of patients. And if we don’t become informed, we can write our own death warrant if we have a “Living Will,” which cleverly leads patients to choose “death by dehydration,” a type of assisted suicide (see Terri Schiavo).

Instead, all of us need an Advance Directivethat specifically states our wishes at end of life for water and nutrition. Water and nutrition are now considered by physicians as “medical care.” Wrong! These are necessary for a comfortable death.

You and I may be a patient in a Catholic hospital, like Providence, one day. Gone is the guarantee that we will be cared for by traditional nurses and doctors who will not want to kill us.

And I haven’t begun talking about how uncomfortable it is to see a Muslim nurse in a Catholic hospital! I’m shocked that the Archdiocesan Catholic Directory approved the photo below! But, then again, thinking it over, this archdiocese, like every diocese in America, is no longer thinking with Rome. It’s all ecumenism now, syncretism: all religions are equally valid to them.